Erik O Kimbrough
Biographic Data
| ID | 826546 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erik O Kimbrough |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erik |
| FAMILY NAME | O Kimbrough |
| SIGNATURE | KIMBROUGH E O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chapman University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6495-0430 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Mediation analysis investigating the mechanisms of two school-based smoking prevention interventions in adolescents from Northern Ireland and Bogotá
Background Reviews have highlighted a lack of evidence on how successful intervention strategies for adolescent smoking prevention can be effectively adapted for low-middle income countries (LMICs). The MECHANISMS study compared behavioral mechanisms between two school-based smoking prevention programs for adolescents in Northern Ireland (NI; a high-income setting) and Bogotá, Colombia (middle-income). ASSIST works via peer education and diffusio…
Replication: Dictator Games with different endowment sources
In Dictator Games, we manipulate whether the endowment is randomly assigned or earned by the dictator or the recipient, in a conceptual replication of Oxoby and Spraggon (2008) and Cherry et al. (2002). Our experimental sample comes from Bogota (Colombia). The experiments introduced performance thresholds based on Cherry et al. (2002), creating low-and high-stakes conditions. Our results confirm that the endowment’s origin shapes allocation decis…
Rethinking the moral–conventional divide: Experimental evidence for consensus-driven judgments
A commonly held view is that moral judgments should not change based on what other people think. In moral philosophy, Social Domain Theory presents a version of this view: it defines as moral those judgments that are insensitive to the presence/absence of consensus. We designed two studies to measure the consensus-sensitivity of moral judgments (N = 731). We measured peoples’ personal judgments and expectations about others’ judgments using a wit…
Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges
The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks ‘knowledge synthesis’, is poorly supported by ‘theory’, has an ambiguous relation…
Crossing the Line: Evidence for the Categorization Theory of Spatial Voting
Bølstad and Dinas (2017) propose a model of spatial voting, based on social identity theory, that suggests supporting a candidate/policy on the other side of the ideological spectrum has a disutility that is not accounted for by common spatial models. Unfortunately, the data they use cannot speak directly to whether the disutility arises because individuals perceive their ideology as a social identity. We present the results of an experimental st…
Selection homophily and peer influence for adolescents’ smoking and vaping norms and outcomes in high and middle-income settings
The MECHANISMS study investigates how social norms for adolescent smoking and vaping are transmitted through school friendship networks, and is the first study to use behavioral economics methodology to assess smoking-related social norms. Here, we investigate the effects of selection homophily (the tendency to form friendships with similar peers) and peer influence (a social process whereby an individual’s behavior or attitudes are affected by p…
Countering the trump effect in Canada: Strengthening support for immigrants using national identity
Social norms are based on expectations of what others believe and do, and so they can shift in response to what trendsetters—highly visible media or political leaders—say or do. There is evidence that former President Trump as a trendsetter has weakened norms against expressing anti-immigrant attitudes in the US. As such, we ask: can trendsetters affect anti-immigrant norms across national borders? Can such spillovers be mitigated by countervaili…
How Norms Shape the Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics
How should ideology be understood, and should we be concerned if Americans lack it? Combining widely used survey questions with an incentivized coordination game, we separately measure individuals’ own policy preferences and their knowledge of what other ideological group members expect them to believe. This allows us to distinguish knowledge of ideological norms—what liberals and conservatives believe ought to go with what—from adherence to thos…
The supply side determinants of territory
This article introduces a simple application of contest theory that neatly captures how Boulding’s ‘loss of strength gradient’ determines the geographic extent of territory. We focus on the ‘supply side’ of territorial conflict, showing how the costs of initiating and escalating conflict over spatially dispersed resources shape the nature and scope of territory. We show that economies of scale in the production of violence and varying costs of pr…
Expressive Politics as (Costly) Norm Following
Reference dependent prices in bargaining: An experimental examination of precise first offers
Mechanisms Study: Using Game Theory to Assess the Effects of Social Norms and Social Networks on Adolescent Smoking in Schools—Study Protocol
This proof of concept study harnesses novel transdisciplinary insights to contrast two school-based smoking prevention interventions among adolescents in the UK and Colombia. We compare schools in these locations because smoking rates and norms are different, in order to better understand social norms based mechanisms of action related to smoking. We aim to: 1) improve the measurement of social norms for smoking behaviors in adolescents and revea…
Alliance Formation in a Side-Taking Experiment
We investigate in an economic experiment how people choose sides in disputes. In an eight-player side-taking game, two disputants at a time fight over an indivisible resource and other group members choose sides. The player with more supporters wins the resource, which is worth real money. Conflicts occur spontaneously between any two individuals in the group. Players choose sides by ranking their loyalties to everyone else in the group, and they…
Norms Make Preferences Social: Norms Make Preferences Social
We explore the idea that prosocial behavior in experimental games is driven by social norms imported into the laboratory. Under this view, differences in behavior across subjects is driven by heterogeneity in sensitivity to social norms. We introduce an incentivized method of eliciting individual norm-sensitivity, and we show how it relates to play in public goods, trust, dictator, and ultimatum games. We show how our observations can be rational…
An Experimental Study of the Impact of Social Comparison on Investment
Objectives With increasing attention being paid to inequality and poverty, this article attempts to shed light on mechanisms by which the poor arrive at decisions that are suboptimal and lead to “poverty traps.” Methods We design a laboratory experiment in which we induce wealth and income differences between subjects to compare their behavior in a simple, two‐period life‐cycle savings and consumption task that controls subjects’ homegrown risk p…
Why can’t we be friends? Entitlements and the costs of conflict
We design an experiment to explore the impact of earned entitlements on the frequency and intensity of conflicts in a two-stage conflict game where players may attempt to use non-binding side-payments to avoid conflict. In this game, Proposers make offers and Responders decide simultaneously whether to accept the offers and whether to engage in a conflict. A simple theoretical analysis suggests that Proposers should never offer side-payments beca…
Insiders, outsiders, and the adaptability of informal rules to ecological shocks
Geography and Social Networks in Nascent Distal Exchange
We design an experiment to explore how geography shapes exchange between spatially distant markets and hypothesize that geographical isolation of traveling intermediaries from stationary sources of production creates social isolation that hinders trade. We characterize our economies with a system of equations derived from Adam Smith: exchange drives specialization, which in turn fuels more exchange, the coupling of which increases welfare. Measur…
How Norms Shape the Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics
How should ideology be understood, and should we be concerned if Americans lack it? Combining widely used survey questions with an incentivized coordination game, we separately measure individuals’ own policy preferences and their knowledge of what other ideological group members expect them to believe. This allows us to distinguish knowledge of ideological norms—what liberals and conservatives believe ought to go with what—from adherence to thos…
Expressive Politics as (Costly) Norm Following
Reference dependent prices in bargaining: An experimental examination of precise first offers
Why can’t we be friends? Entitlements and the costs of conflict
We design an experiment to explore the impact of earned entitlements on the frequency and intensity of conflicts in a two-stage conflict game where players may attempt to use non-binding side-payments to avoid conflict. In this game, Proposers make offers and Responders decide simultaneously whether to accept the offers and whether to engage in a conflict. A simple theoretical analysis suggests that Proposers should never offer side-payments beca…
Crossing the Line: Evidence for the Categorization Theory of Spatial Voting
Bølstad and Dinas (2017) propose a model of spatial voting, based on social identity theory, that suggests supporting a candidate/policy on the other side of the ideological spectrum has a disutility that is not accounted for by common spatial models. Unfortunately, the data they use cannot speak directly to whether the disutility arises because individuals perceive their ideology as a social identity. We present the results of an experimental st…
An Experimental Study of the Impact of Social Comparison on Investment
Objectives With increasing attention being paid to inequality and poverty, this article attempts to shed light on mechanisms by which the poor arrive at decisions that are suboptimal and lead to “poverty traps.” Methods We design a laboratory experiment in which we induce wealth and income differences between subjects to compare their behavior in a simple, two‐period life‐cycle savings and consumption task that controls subjects’ homegrown risk p…
Geography and Social Networks in Nascent Distal Exchange
We design an experiment to explore how geography shapes exchange between spatially distant markets and hypothesize that geographical isolation of traveling intermediaries from stationary sources of production creates social isolation that hinders trade. We characterize our economies with a system of equations derived from Adam Smith: exchange drives specialization, which in turn fuels more exchange, the coupling of which increases welfare. Measur…
Insiders, outsiders, and the adaptability of informal rules to ecological shocks
Why can’t we be friends? Entitlements and the costs of conflict
We design an experiment to explore the impact of earned entitlements on the frequency and intensity of conflicts in a two-stage conflict game where players may attempt to use non-binding side-payments to avoid conflict. In this game, Proposers make offers and Responders decide simultaneously whether to accept the offers and whether to engage in a conflict. A simple theoretical analysis suggests that Proposers should never offer side-payments beca…
Norms Make Preferences Social: Norms Make Preferences Social
We explore the idea that prosocial behavior in experimental games is driven by social norms imported into the laboratory. Under this view, differences in behavior across subjects is driven by heterogeneity in sensitivity to social norms. We introduce an incentivized method of eliciting individual norm-sensitivity, and we show how it relates to play in public goods, trust, dictator, and ultimatum games. We show how our observations can be rational…
An Experimental Study of the Impact of Social Comparison on Investment
Objectives With increasing attention being paid to inequality and poverty, this article attempts to shed light on mechanisms by which the poor arrive at decisions that are suboptimal and lead to “poverty traps.” Methods We design a laboratory experiment in which we induce wealth and income differences between subjects to compare their behavior in a simple, two‐period life‐cycle savings and consumption task that controls subjects’ homegrown risk p…
Alliance Formation in a Side-Taking Experiment
We investigate in an economic experiment how people choose sides in disputes. In an eight-player side-taking game, two disputants at a time fight over an indivisible resource and other group members choose sides. The player with more supporters wins the resource, which is worth real money. Conflicts occur spontaneously between any two individuals in the group. Players choose sides by ranking their loyalties to everyone else in the group, and they…
Mechanisms Study: Using Game Theory to Assess the Effects of Social Norms and Social Networks on Adolescent Smoking in Schools—Study Protocol
This proof of concept study harnesses novel transdisciplinary insights to contrast two school-based smoking prevention interventions among adolescents in the UK and Colombia. We compare schools in these locations because smoking rates and norms are different, in order to better understand social norms based mechanisms of action related to smoking. We aim to: 1) improve the measurement of social norms for smoking behaviors in adolescents and revea…
Reference dependent prices in bargaining: An experimental examination of precise first offers
The supply side determinants of territory
This article introduces a simple application of contest theory that neatly captures how Boulding’s ‘loss of strength gradient’ determines the geographic extent of territory. We focus on the ‘supply side’ of territorial conflict, showing how the costs of initiating and escalating conflict over spatially dispersed resources shape the nature and scope of territory. We show that economies of scale in the production of violence and varying costs of pr…
Expressive Politics as (Costly) Norm Following
Selection homophily and peer influence for adolescents’ smoking and vaping norms and outcomes in high and middle-income settings
The MECHANISMS study investigates how social norms for adolescent smoking and vaping are transmitted through school friendship networks, and is the first study to use behavioral economics methodology to assess smoking-related social norms. Here, we investigate the effects of selection homophily (the tendency to form friendships with similar peers) and peer influence (a social process whereby an individual’s behavior or attitudes are affected by p…
Countering the trump effect in Canada: Strengthening support for immigrants using national identity
Social norms are based on expectations of what others believe and do, and so they can shift in response to what trendsetters—highly visible media or political leaders—say or do. There is evidence that former President Trump as a trendsetter has weakened norms against expressing anti-immigrant attitudes in the US. As such, we ask: can trendsetters affect anti-immigrant norms across national borders? Can such spillovers be mitigated by countervaili…
How Norms Shape the Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics
How should ideology be understood, and should we be concerned if Americans lack it? Combining widely used survey questions with an incentivized coordination game, we separately measure individuals’ own policy preferences and their knowledge of what other ideological group members expect them to believe. This allows us to distinguish knowledge of ideological norms—what liberals and conservatives believe ought to go with what—from adherence to thos…
Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges
The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks ‘knowledge synthesis’, is poorly supported by ‘theory’, has an ambiguous relation…
Crossing the Line: Evidence for the Categorization Theory of Spatial Voting
Bølstad and Dinas (2017) propose a model of spatial voting, based on social identity theory, that suggests supporting a candidate/policy on the other side of the ideological spectrum has a disutility that is not accounted for by common spatial models. Unfortunately, the data they use cannot speak directly to whether the disutility arises because individuals perceive their ideology as a social identity. We present the results of an experimental st…
Rethinking the moral–conventional divide: Experimental evidence for consensus-driven judgments
A commonly held view is that moral judgments should not change based on what other people think. In moral philosophy, Social Domain Theory presents a version of this view: it defines as moral those judgments that are insensitive to the presence/absence of consensus. We designed two studies to measure the consensus-sensitivity of moral judgments (N = 731). We measured peoples’ personal judgments and expectations about others’ judgments using a wit…
Mediation analysis investigating the mechanisms of two school-based smoking prevention interventions in adolescents from Northern Ireland and Bogotá
Background Reviews have highlighted a lack of evidence on how successful intervention strategies for adolescent smoking prevention can be effectively adapted for low-middle income countries (LMICs). The MECHANISMS study compared behavioral mechanisms between two school-based smoking prevention programs for adolescents in Northern Ireland (NI; a high-income setting) and Bogotá, Colombia (middle-income). ASSIST works via peer education and diffusio…
Replication: Dictator Games with different endowment sources
In Dictator Games, we manipulate whether the endowment is randomly assigned or earned by the dictator or the recipient, in a conceptual replication of Oxoby and Spraggon (2008) and Cherry et al. (2002). Our experimental sample comes from Bogota (Colombia). The experiments introduced performance thresholds based on Cherry et al. (2002), creating low-and high-stakes conditions. Our results confirm that the endowment’s origin shapes allocation decis…
Economics (12 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (11 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Law (6 works)